That the opium trade, illegal as it is, forms an essential element, interference with which would derange the whole circle of operations, must be too apparent to require further demonstration.
Reference to the practical details of the colossal trade in which it plays so prominent a part shows that it is inextricably mixed up with every trading operation between the three countries, and that to recognise the one and ignore the other is about as difficult in any practical sense as to accept the acquaintance of one of the Siamese twins and deny all knowledge of his brother.
No attempt of the British Government to stop or materially diminish the consumption could possibly avail, or be otherwise than productive of aggravated mischief to India, to China, and to the whole world, by giving a motive for its forced production where it is now unknown, and throwing the trade into hands less scrupulous, and relieved of all those checks which under the British flag prevent the trade from taking the worst characters of smuggling, and being confounded with other acts of a lawless and piratical nature affecting life and property, to the destruction of all friendly or commercial relations between the two races. It is also sufficient to bear in mind that it is a traffic, as has been shown, which vitalises the whole of our commerce in the East; that without such means of laying down funds the whole trade would languish, and its present proportions, colossal as they are, soon shrink into other and insignificant dimensions; that the two branches of trade are otherwise so inextricably interwoven, that no means could be devised (were they less essential to each other) of separating them. And finally, although Great Britain has much to lose, China in such a quixotic enterprise has little or nothing to gain.
Notwithstanding all these weighty considerations, Mr Alcock never swerved in his desire to see "the opium trade, with all its train of contradictions, anomalies, and falsifying conditions," modified, if not done away with. In a careful despatch to Sir John Bowring dated May 6, 1854, reviewing our whole position in China, he thus expresses himself:—
Any modification for the better in our relations must, I believe, begin here. We must either find means of inducing the Chinese Government to diminish the evil by legalising the trade, or enter the field of discussion ... with a stone wall before us.... The legalisation would go far to diminish the obstacle such an outrider to our treaty creates; but far better would it be, and more profitable in the end in view of what China might become commercially to Europe, America, and to Great Britain specially, if the Indian Government abandoned their three million sterling revenue from the cultivation of opium, and our merchants submitted to the temporary prejudice or inconvenience of importing silver for the balance of trade.
Nearly twenty years afterwards we find Mr Alcock still engaged on the problem how to diminish the trade in opium without dislocating both the trade and finance of India, his last act on retiring from China in 1870 having been to propose a fiscal scheme of rearrangement by which the opium trade might undergo a process of slow and painless extinction.[23]
The attitude of the British Government towards the opium trade has always been ambiguous. Succeeding to the inheritance of the East India Company as the great growers of opium, they had to carry on its traditions. These had led the Company in its trading days into some striking inconsistencies, for though they cultivated the poppy expressly for the China market, employing all the intelligence at their command to adapt their product to the special tastes of the Chinese, they yet refused to carry a single chest of it in their own ships which traded to China. By this policy they thought they could exonerate themselves in face of the Chinese authorities from participation in a trade which was under the ban of that Government. The importation of the drug was thus thrown upon private adventurers, and whenever the subject was agitated in Canton and Macao, none were so warm in their denunciations of the trade as the servants of the East India Company. This was notably the case with Captain Elliot, who, after leaving the Company's service and becoming representative of the Crown, never wearied in his strictures on the opium traffic.
The question of legalising the traffic had frequently before been considered by the Chinese Government,[24] and it was fully expected that this was the policy which would prevail in Peking in 1837. The pendulum swung to the opposite side, namely, that of prohibition, and legalisation was not adopted until 1858. But once adopted, the idea made such progress that in 1885 the Chinese Government made a successful appeal to the British Government to be allowed to treble the import duty authorised in 1858, and that the Colonial Government of Hongkong should render them special assistance in collecting it.